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April 2013 Entry: Róth Tharith, handdrawn map

Hello! I joined here simply because of this challenge that I found out about from the bay12games site. I thought I´d give it a go, since it seemed fun.

I prefer drawing maps by hand, since I enjoy the manual, almost meditative feeling of just drawing on a free day, so I decided to keep on the manual way. It's probably not gonna be as fancy as some of the entries I have already seen people posting, since I am by no means a experienced painter, but I hope that it will be pretty to look at, at least.

I made a small island world, tried a few until I got one I liked, that had a decent spread of civs and a nice shape. (The more I draw this world the more I love the shape!) using the legend viewer mentioned in the main thread (Thanks alot for that, whoever linked to it, it's been an invaluable help!), I then printed it out in several parts, since my printer only handles A4 papers and my final paper was a bit larger and I wanted to make it as big as possible to get as much detail in there as I could.
I taped the parts together, and got the correct size on the third try! =D
Wasting printer ink, me? No, never.

I then tried some methods to get the map from the printout to the watercolor paper I use, and finally came up with the idea to just use a hard pencil and push so that it leaves a groove underneath, which I highlight with a flashlight from the side and fill in. After that I paint the seas with watercolor.

In hindsight, I should have made the whole paper a gray-brownish base, possibly stained it with dilluted coffe or tea to give it an aged parchment look, but since I already started with the seas when I thought of that, I had to make do with what I had.
I marked the mountainrange and the ice levels just so that I dont forget later.

Next is to mix up color batches for all the different terrain types, paint out the mountains (I dread that part, since I have not settled for a good mountain look yet), forests, rivers and lastly cities and other landmarks as well as names and such.

I'll try to keep the colorscheme a bit grayish, not too many clear colors that will eat up the picture. I'll fill in all the details with ink.

PS: I am sorry that I cant scan the map yet, it´d be a hassle to do that only for a WIP pic, since I have to puzzle it together, so I am afraid you´ll have to make do with photos until I am done. I saw nothing against using photos in the rules though. Again, Sorry.

I have an Imgur album with progress pics as well. Check it out if you are intrested. Róth Tharith - Imgur

Original map

### LATEST WIP ###

Last edited by Khamero; 04-07-2013 at 05:30 PM.
Reason: I typo´d. Alot.

Second Update

Diamond: Its more patience than talent, I feel like. I have made some other smaller maps as well, I got infatuated with ink pens and wanted to make something, and besides calligraphy, I feel that maps is something such pens are useful for, so I just started making a map and found that I liked it. =)

Korash: Thanks! It's a really inspiring place, especially a challenge like this one. =)
I have posted it in the imgur link, but I'll edit it into the first post as well for clarity. I made the imgur album so that I could document the entire process better instead without cluttering the forum with it all.

Today I "filled" the map with watercolors. I made a mistake and started painting some dark forests, when I could have just layered it with a light green and then put layer upon layer for the other greens.
Hindsight is 20/20 and I'll hopefully do better on my next map. I´ll just have to work around it all.
The next step after this is to basically map out all the colors and start thinking of what cities should be shown, and if I´ll have actually cities drawn out or just red dots representing large sites.
With ink, its always a challenge to draw small detail, but I do prefer actual little images of cities and intresting sites rather than just dots and stuff. It's food for thought.

Love it. I'm fascinated with Watercolors lately and have been fiddling with them myself so I can totally empathize with the whole, "Oh, I should have done it that way instead." Love the process pictures, we are happy for you to "clutter up the forum" as you say it. We love seeing the progress unfold and that is a big part of what we all love about this place. Everyone documents their process a little differently but we get everything from just a final image to the complete day by day update so feel free to go for it. We have a lot of space so don't worry about that and speaking for myself I would rather see the gradual unfolding of the project because I'm learning by watching how things go with yours.

“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden

I agree with Jaxilon. More progress updates do help to learn the process. But it is easier to read through them on your imgur gallery. Clever, but I cringed throughout your tracing process. There are a couple of simpler options: Graphite transfer paper, which you put between your tracing image and your art paper, or a light box; you can make an easy home-made version out of a glass cutting board or pie dish and set it carefully atop a standard conical lampshade with your tracing image sandwiched between the glass and your art paper. Alternate light box is a window in daylight. Of course, the light box only works if you detach your art paper from the pad.

This is looking nice. I've been hoarding a couple of hot-press Arches watercolor boards to paint maps on... but I'm not that good at patience when it comes to building up colors gradually. I also don't use watercolors, but transparent acrylics. Need to sit down and practice. =)

Jaxilon: I´ll post all I can here as well then. I love making little in process series of things I do, so its just fun. =)

Chashio: Yes, I've used different tracing methods before, but this time I didint have any glass or a fitting lamp, so I did what I could. It actually worked pretty well, for being an improvised solution with a flashlight. =)
I prefer the runnyness of watercolors. I´d love to see some acrylic maps and how they would turn up. There are some parts that are very hard to do with watercolors, like distinct details, which could probably be better with thicker paint that does not run. The ink I am planning to use is better than the watercolors, but not that good.

Some of these pics are a bit old, since I've been working a little now and then.

Here is the workspace for the evening, checking out the map in legends and painting some badlands and savannahs.

I am also really starting to worry about how to make the glaciers and the map symbols. Making villages and cities is easy enough, but as I am planning to stick with the ingame races and try to make the map as close to the game as possible, I want to do authentic dwarven fortresses as well, and I honestly dont know how to make them and making them look good and as impressive as I imagine them.
However, I am thinking of using the ingame ASCII symbols for settlements. Colors might be changed, but the symbols themselves could stay the same.

This is my lates scrabble map, with settlements, rivers, areas and everything in a great big mess. Also marked up the settlements inhabitants and which settlements contain the civ leaders. Some were changed since the game does not always put civ leaders in the largest or even large cities. There is a human law giver (highest position) that lives in a town with 20 inhabitants for example. That was changed.

Aaaaand another update, since time is running out, so I'll have to put some effort into it.

A good day of drawing and painting makes one pretty tired, but some things cleared up. I decided to go for the DF ASCII map legend for the settlements and sites after all, which had the pleasant sideffect of being alot quicker to do than actually painting loads of little towns and such. The positions are not 100% accurate, and I realized only now after letting the map rest while I ate dinner that most of the site icons are crooked, probably due to me sitting weirdly while drawing.
Again, this is why making maps by hand can be very troublesome, and also rewarding. You have to live with the mistakes, but every mistake also adds to the uniqueness of the map itself. That being said, I'm kinda bummed about it all. I also messed up one of the human towns, which got filled in since my brush was too wet. Reapainting it would be a very messy project, so I'll let it stand.

Here I have added the rivers and streams that would be big enough to be intresting on the map. In the detailed map, there are LOADS of smaller streams and such, but I decided to leave them out. Much of this map is marches and swamps as well, so it would be littred with still ponds and small brooks anyhow.

This is the first sign of whats to come. The first elf settlement I drew. I was so proud I took a picture. The symbol as well as the color is original from the game, and it looks pretty good, I think.

Forest retreats galore. A quick shot of the workspace as well.

Even more forest retreats. I decided to make the capital retreats a more shiny kind of yellow, and wth a bigger symbol. I kinda failed the first one, to the right, but the second one, in the middle of the map, stands out nicely.

I just added the human towns and cities. The failed one is the one closest to the top, which is just a blot rather than a circle. The capitals are bigger and with kinda crosshair-like protrutions on their icons. I am not terribly pleased with the looks, since all the other icons are more elaborate and foreign, while the human towns are just a circle, but I stuck to form. The circle is the original ASCII icon from the game and the blue color is from the legends viewer.

Here are the goblin towers added. They are a very dark green, as from the legends viewer, which I had hoped would get lighter when it dried. It didint, but the almost black looks kinda sickly if you think about it, which suits those little dwarfnappers perfectly. The main towers are bigger than the others. There were loads of smaller towers, with just a hundred or less inhabitants, that I didint add in, since they fell below the population limit for what I wanted to draw. The main towers have 3000-5000 inhabitants though, so they are pretty well defended.

Finally added the dwarves and their little gate-like icon. The capitals are larger, and there is also a slightly larger fortress slightly north of the two capitals that was just large enough to warrant a slightly larger icon (5000 inhabitants)

And last but not least, the final result of a days hard work. Grass for the grasslands around the humans have been added, and I am pondering if I should add rolling hills as well. The vast marches and swamps have gotten some blochy pools that I'll decorate with reeds and grass to make them suitably damp and wilderness-like.

THe next step will be to fix the swamps, which will be a tedious task, but rewarding in the end, detailing the mountains and forests with, well, mountain peaks and trees, respectively, as well as the small patches of badlands and tropical shrubland/savannah. Finally, there may or may not be labeling of the major cities and such. And I will have to do the glaciers. I still have no idea how to do those. I might have to buy more watercolors. Some of my coloring choices come from my quite limited little box of watercolors, something I rather like, since nothing brings out creativity and uniqueness, as far as I can tell, as having limits on what you can do or the materials you have to work with. But having an icy blue or white would really really make my life easier with the glaciers.

PS: Thanks to whichever mod that fixed the title of the thread. It was very embarrassing.

Last edited by Khamero; 04-21-2013 at 04:12 PM.
Reason: Error with wip tag.